Lane Fox says: 'You underestimated me'

NEWS Martha Lane Fox, the founder of the most over-hyped of all dot-coms, is determined that her company will survive the worst of the economic storm - and in the process hopes to prove that her detractors have got it spectacularly wrong. When Lastminute floated in March 2000, its valuation reached a peak of £820m - not bad for a company with a turnover equivalent to that of a pub, as one analyst put it at the time. Since then, the hype has turned to derision, the recession has begun to bite and the very people who once talked up the prospects of the company are now damning it. Its shares have fallen 93 per cent since flotation. But Lane Fox remains ebullient. In an interview with the Independent on Sunday, she describes herself as "bloodied but unbowed". "There were a lot of terrible ideas out there," she said, "but ours is basically a good one. We do what our name says, and people buy things. I don't regret the float one bit." Lastminute is even beginning to talk openly about the 'P' word (ie. profitability - see http://www.silicon.com/a46626 ), and was recently named the UK's most popular travel site, beating the likes of EasyJet and RyanAir. Lane Fox said: "We're not getting the battering we used to, and I think people have realised that they underestimated me and Brent [Hoberman, the company's co-founder]. "I remember everyone saying that because we were building a business with people we knew, we could not be able to get tough with them. Nobody who knows me would have said that." Of the heady days of spring 2000, she said: "It was a crazy period... On one level, I played the publicity for all I could get. On the other, it was really depressing. Brent was just as important as me, but because I was 26 and blonde, I got all the interest." Depressing it may have been, but Lane Fox has retained her belief in the future of her company. "I will survive," she said.